The present invention concerns a device for increasing shock absorption by hydraulic means in the terminal section of hydraulic shock absorbers. Devices of this genus are called decompression-stroke buffers and compression-stroke buffers.
Decompression-and-compression stroke buffers are employed to prevent the dynamics piston in a hydraulic shock absorber from traveling all the way to the end of its stroke unbraked, It has been demonstrated practical to provide such devices with hydraulic means. The entrance that the fluid enters the piston through at the end of its stroke is accordingly partly blocked by flat or pot-shaped caps. Since these structures are mounted on springs, the shock absorption at the end of the stroke will be increased.
Hydraulic decompression-and-compression stroke buffers are known from the German reference Reimpeil and Stoll, Fahrwerktechnik: Stoxcex2- und Schwingungsdxc3xa4mpfer, pages 188 to 188. They have a drawback. The evident fluid-intake surfaces, bores in the event, are partly blocked, leaving crescent-shaped open cross-sections. Tolerance, displacement, and other factors make it impossible to ensure that these cross-sections will remain precise. This particular shape makes the volume of incoming fluid and hence the level of shock absorption in the vicinity of the decompression-and-compression stroke buffer highly unstable.
The object of the present invention is accordingly to ensure precise and constant supplementary shock absorption in the vicinity of the hydraulic buffers.
The advantage of the present invention is that the precise and constant shock absorption can be reliably attained with simple components.
One particular advantage of the present invention over the prior art is that the different resilient washers or stacks thereof allow the characteristic at the exit from the decompression-and-compression stroke shock absorption intake piston to be adjusted to attain maximal or minimal absorption forces, ascending gradients, and start-up behavior as necessary, generating reproducible absorption forces while the vehicle is in operation, leading in turn to calculable performance, and contributing to safe driving.